Her boots were not pretty. During their shopping spree, Max had generally bowed to her superior fashion sense, with his occasional suggestions regarding current fashion faux pas and the like, but he insisted they wear these solid-feeling and, unfortunately solid-looking, stone toe crab crushers. She’d made it work however, polishing up the leather and buffing the stone toes. They looked badass when she was finished. The term just blurted out of her when she described the boots. She liked it. It just felt right, though as usual she could not explain why.
“So, does he know we are coming?” she asked Max, “Duncan?”
“He doesn’t know. But he goes to the theater regularly, and when he does, he sits in the same place,” Max said.
Max wore a suit quite similar to Snow’s, though his was red rather than blue. And he wore a dark green beret. It was the fashion for tall lanky men these days, Snow guessed, based on how many tall lanky men wearing berets she saw in the street. And his ruffled white shirt, though still alarmingly puffy, was not quite as puffy as Snow’s. Max didn’t seem to be bothered either way, but Snow felt, in his case, less was more. More manly any way. She wasn’t sure why that was important, but she did what she’d done every day since she awoke from a pod, buried in ice, at the top of the world. She trusted her instincts.
“Badass,” Max said uncertainly. They had stopped in front of a shop window to admire themselves again.
“Bad, ass!” Snow said, correcting his emphasis.
“Bad. Ass,” Max said.
“Better. You just need to be a little more enthusiastic. Work on it,” Snow said.
They continued on their way to the theater. Snow waved greetings to people on the street, nervous and thrilled to be amongst so many other smiling, happy people. But as they got closer to the theater, the crowds grew denser and Snow began to feel less thrilled and more nervous. She grabbed Max tightly by the hand, frightened they might become separated. He grunted, as usual, as if she were somehow abusing him, but she didn’t care right now, she was just hoping the crowd would thin around the next corner.
Instead it became even denser. She grabbed Max around the waist and held on tight as they shuffled through the crowd. It was bad enough she was cramped so close, in a sea of people. But matters were worse. She couldn’t see more than a few feet as most people were either taller than she was, or much taller than she was. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, moment by moment holding panic at bay.
Max may have sensed her distress. Though perhaps it was only that she was squeezing him too tight and he could no longer breathe (making two of them.) Whatever the case, with effort he broke her grasp and lifted her onto his shoulders, knocking his beret off and losing it beneath the crowd in the process.
Like magic, she felt an immediate sense of relief sitting above the crowds on her own personal mount. She could now see they were in a wide circular plaza hemmed in by stone buildings, five or six stories high, with an enormous stadium at the center. The buildings were constructed with beautifully carved walls, sculptures, and pillars. But they paled in comparison to the stadium. Its sculptures showed complex battle scenes, pitting people against monsters and beasts, and they covered every wall and pillar and door. As they approached the stadium she saw, in the corner of one elaborate scene, a man pierced by a harpoon was being drawn towards a creature with far too many legs, while other men and women fought the beast with spears and swords and… a laser pistol?
Crowds filed in from all directions, entering the building from every side. There were hundreds or perhaps thousands of people. Snow tried not to imagine what would happen if they all tried to leave at the same time. Too late, her heart began to race again. She would be fine, she told herself. Just so long as Max kept his footing. She glanced down at his face. She knew what he looked like when he was worried. He didn’t look worried at all. She allowed that thought to ease her mind.
They flowed with the crowd, and more swiftly than she imagined possible they were passing through impressive stone arches and into the massive building. Soft green letters and numbers glowed on electronic display screens above the arches, in the dark shadow cast by the gas lamps, indicating seat numbers and sections. The stream of people continued through the building and eventually, after the crowd was split several times, Snow and Max came out into a vast open stadium.
The stadium was filled on all sides with tiered banks of seating. There was room for tens of thousands of people and, from the look of it, there would be no room to spare. In the center of the stadium was a gigantic central platform. On it were four giant screens forming a square between them.
Max lifted Snow off his shoulders and placed her on the floor. “Thank you,” she said, making deliberate eye contact.
Max punched her in the shoulder.
They continued along their row and sat down. The seats were a hodgepodge of new, old, and in between. Some were made of wood while others of plastics. A few had the opal sheen of seashell. Max explained that when a seat became too damaged to be of use, someone would replace it. There was no shortage of people that would jump at the chance to place their seat in the theater. If lucky and well made, their seat could serve for decades. Snow stood up and examined her seat. It was a mix of inlaid wood for the seat and back, supported by what looked like a hard, white seashell. It was almost as if it had been grown into shape, with numerous thick white struts, beneath smooth wide arm rests. All of the seats sat on broad, old, concrete patched stone steps. And each row was lifted above the previous one giving a clear view down to the floor and screens.
Snow soaked it all in. The gas lamp lighting, spread throughout the stadium, cast a dim, even, yellow glow over the thousands of people waiting. Snow asked over the din, “Did we forget to pay?”
Max shook his head and said, “No, there’s no fee. It’s our heritage. Everyone on Grailliyn watches the shows. The same show at the same time. Though they’re not always this… busy.” He looked apologetic.
She considered the layout of the theater and couldn’t see where ‘the back row on the left’ would be. Those instructions made no sense here.
“So how are we going to find Duncan amongst all these people?”
“Oh, he isn’t here. He is at a smaller theater. I just thought you would want to get the full experience,” Max said. “We’ll go there between shows. It’s not as ah… crowded.”
“The experience has been very full thank you,” Snow said. She was going to say something more. But the lights dimmed, and the din of voices hushed to silence. The crowd had become so quiet that Snow could hear a small chorus of puffs and pops as the gas lamps went out. Soon it was all dark and all quiet. It was a bit frightening. Not ‘trapped in a sea of people unable to see or breathe’ frightening, but frightening nonetheless. A melody began to play with a deep range of sound, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. The darkness was interrupted a short time later when suddenly the screens lit just as the melody faded. The screens were white with a black crossed circle and a number in the center. The number counted down from three to zero with a beep accompanying each count. The screen went dark again for a moment, then the movies began.
What followed in the next few hours was story after story, played out in full color motion and a dynamic range of sound. Snow didn’t know what to expect beforehand, but if they were playing the ‘normal/strange’ game, this would fall solidly under the category of normal. Of all the things they had done and seen since she awoke, this was the most normal thing. She had watched movies before, she was certain of it. Though, some of them weren’t really movies. They were… TV shows.
She tried to tell Max about it during the show. In response she received an epic shush. He seemed desperate to keep her from speaking during the show and all the people in earshot looked at her like she was some sort of villain, miscreant, or perhaps just pitiably stupid. She wordlessly apologized. The people went back to watching the movie and she went back to stuffing crunchy candy-covered bacteria cubes into her mouth, f
eeling foolish and annoyed.
Her mood improved immediately when Space Bunny came on. No one could maintain a foul mood when exposed to Space Bunny and his carrot eating, planet hopping, duck shooting antics.
When the movies finally ended and the lamps lit back up, Snow stayed seated and waited for the crowd to abate. Now that sounds were no longer punishable by shushing, Snow told Max about the difference between ‘movies’ and ‘TV shows’.
Max said he didn’t think they needed a different name just because they were short.
Snow told him that he should hunt down whomever it was that had labeled them differently, and let them know what he thought about it, because she was certainly not responsible for it. She was only responsible for telling Max about it.
Max showed just how smart he could be at times by closing his mouth. As a result, she did not punch him in his ribs.
While they continued to wait, Snow pulled her pendant out and fidgeted with it, wrapping it, and unwrapping it on her finger.
“Can I take a look at that?” Max asked, putting his hand out.
Snow shrugged, “Sure thing Mr. Shush.”
She lifted the chain, upsetting both her wig and top hat, and knocking them into the vacated aisle below them.
“Oops,” she said, then handed the necklace to Max, and hopped the seats in front of her to the row below. Again, she felt the sensation she first noticed back on the boat when she was tossed momentarily into the air by an unseen wave. What she noticed was that the moment it took to fall was a longer moment than she was expecting. The falling didn’t happen quite as fast as it should have. Afterwards she tested it, hopping in place, and confirmed it was a real thing. This drop to the row below was longer, and the effect was thrilling. Unfortunately, it drew additional attention as she grabbed her blonde wig in order to place back onto her blonde head.
When she finished fitting the wig in place, she stood up straight to reseat her top hat. People were staring. Many of them were the same people that gave her baleful looks for talking during the movie.
“How did she come off the screen, daddy?” asked one little girl with braided pigtails and her own little top hat.
“Oh, I’m sure she only looks like one of the first people sweetheart…” he said uncertainly. He, along with a number of the other theater goers, caught himself staring and politely looked away. Many others did not have the same manners and continued to stare, clearly uncertain of what they had just seen. Their interest was fleeting however, and when they had an opportunity to exit their rows and make their way out of the theater, they took it.
Snow looked at Max in the row above her. She expected him to be making a face and she was not let down. But it was not the what-have-you-done? face she was expecting. Instead he was looking at the pendant and then down to her with a look of realization. He smacked his forehead with the palm of his other hand.
Chapter 21
Max jumped down beside Snow and took a seat. He took her hand in his, smearing her makeup onto his palm as he did so, and pulled her over to the seat beside him. He looked to see if anyone was listening, but the adjacent rows had emptied quickly.
Still holding her hand, and with a serious tone, he said, “The first people.”
“The first people,” she said. “I’m going to need more—”
“You’re one of the first people,” Max said.
“To jump across these seats?” she said. “Are you the second?”
Max looked around again, feeling foolish. “The first people are… It’s like another origin myth.”
Snow just looked at him waiting, perhaps for another story.
“It’s not from one of the stories. It’s more like… from all the stories. Bits here, pieces there,” he said, “But there are some artifacts too. More than one Queen in the Valley, has what they claim to be an ancient laser pistol.” He paused for a reaction.
Snow was intrigued and her face said, I’m-a-Queen-where-do-I-get-my-laser-gun? But she controlled herself, limiting her outburst to, “Pew, Pew!” and using finger pistols to shoot up the ceiling.
“Not that anyone has ever seen one in action. I mean they’re probably fake…”
“Story ruined.”
“But then there’s your necklace… your pendant. I’ve seen one before.”
Only when she’d taken the time to holster her finger lasers did he get her full attention. “Go on history teller. My pendant?”
“It was familiar when I first saw it. I didn’t remember why, but I do now. There’s part of one in the HOSaS museum,” he said, “It’s from the first people. Our history hasn’t been fully recorded, not all the way back. Hence all the stories.”
He continued, telling her again about The Question, the big question. Where did the people of Grailliyn come from? He told her how they clearly didn’t evolve on this planet, they couldn’t even participate in the local food chain, neither as predator, nor as prey. Which was odd, since in the movies people ate all sorts of plants and animals, but exactly zero slices of bac-mat. On occasions where Grailliyn wildlife dined on people, the beasts often became sick. In extreme cases they died, presumably poisoned by the foreign human meat.
Everyone on Grailliyn knew of the question and nearly everyone took part in the survey. Each played their small part in trying to discover the answer to The Question. In the North it became the ritual of adulthood, replacing traditional tasks which varied by culture throughout the North and the Valleys. Some of those tasks had been risky, such as spending a few days alone in the forest, or wrestling a chunk weasel. Other tasks others had been more cerebral, but they had all been replaced by the survey.
“There are ancient stories telling of strange people that would appear from the wilderness, not knowing where they came from or who they were and then invariably go on to become rulers or trusted advisers or stalwart heroes,” Max said, “So you can see, not exactly credible stories.”
“They don’t seem so in-credible to me…” Snow said.
“There are no records before about fourteen hundred years ago,” Max said. “In the north there’s consensus that we came from the south. In the south their stories mostly say they came from the north. If you believe that, then you’re left with Tawnee, right in the middle. But they don’t know either, they’re the ones who started HOSaS to begin with.”
“Well… I am pretty heroic. I mean, that crab never saw what hit it,” Snow said in a semi-mocking boast. She breathed on the fingernails of her right hand and buffed them theatrically on her jacket. “I bet I could wrestle a chunk weasel.”
“Of course you could. But…” he said, poking her in the ribs, then squeezing her shoulder, then her knee.
“What?” she said, “I would pin that weasel so fast.”
“Are you sure you could afford to lose a chunk?” Max said and took bites from her sides with imaginary chunk weasel mouths formed from his hands.
“Yom, Yom!” said his imaginary chunk weasels.
Snow giggled uncontrollably and squirmed away, contorting her body around her seat to escape his ticklish fingers.
He ceased the weasel attack before he gave her reason to hit back and said, “Still… you’re very strong, and pretty fast too. I suppose you might get a perfect score. But chunk wrestlers don’t respect a perfect score. They’re proud of their wounds.”
“Am I? Very strong? You said very strong, too late to take it back,” she said, and there was a glint in her eye.
Max nodded, instead of saying, “Duh.”
She stood up. “Okay, let’s test that,” she said and motioned for Max to stand as well.
Max got to his feet and was about to ask what she had in mind when Snow grabbed him by the hips and lifted him straight up above her head.
“Feel the power!” she said.
Max looked from one side of the row, with seats rising, to the other side with the rows plunging downwards. He attempted to hide his nervousness but failed.
“Not bad,” he said
, his voice tight.
“You’re not as heavy as I thought. What do you weigh? A buck fifty?” she said, spinning around slowly, still holding Max aloft.
“I don’t know what that means,” replied Max, his voice wavered as she micro pressed him up and down over her head.
“Me neither,” Snow said and put him down, “But I feel like I’m cheating. Like you’re a foam Max or something.”
He was at first unable to shake the feeling that he had something to prove. He considered grabbing Snow by the hips and lifting her over his head. But when he saw the attention they’d drawn already, he forgot about it and sat down.
Snow flexed her muscles for the benefit of a little girl that was watching, then she sat back down beside Max.
Recalling her weight on his shoulders he said, “You don’t feel like foam. You’re kind of heavy actually. Dense.”
She gave him a scathing look in response. “There’s no reason to be mean.”
“I wasn’t being mean. You just… weigh more than you should for such a… small person,” Max said, bracing for the punch that arrived a moment later.
“I am tall. I am very tall. You and your… people are…” she paused then spat out, “abominations!” She spoke in an animated but hushed voice, stretching her arms out wide, making monster hands in what must have been a mime for inappropriately tall.
“Okay miss tall, let’s try not to make a scene,” Max said, failing to keep a smile from his voice.
“You’re a scene,” she said.
They waited until the crowd thinned completely and then made their way out through the cavernous halls. The hallways appeared much roomier now that they were largely empty. The wear patterns on the solid stone floors showed the building’s age, which contrasted with the new, high-tech BioLogical signs on the walls. The glowing numbers on the electronic signs were now counting down to the next four-hour block of movies, just under an hour from now.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 10